Closed terror case hearing not recorded: 'We screwed up'

Video: Appeals court in Chicago holds highly unusual 'secret' session

A federal appeals court in Chicago held a highly unusual closed-door session with government officials Wednesday after debating in public whether attorneys for a local terrorism suspect should be allowed to view confidential surveillance documents filed i

A federal appeals court in Chicago held a highly unusual closed-door session with government officials Wednesday after debating in public whether attorneys for a local terrorism suspect should be allowed to view confidential surveillance documents filed i

The clerk of the federal appeals court in Chicago said today his office “screwed up” in not recording the audio of historic arguments Wednesday over whether attorneys for a local terrorism suspect should be allowed to view confidential surveillance documents filed in the case.

Gino Agnello, the clerk for the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, said employees in charge of turning on the recording equipment were intimidated by the unprecedented security surrounding the case and mistakenly thought they weren’t supposed to record it. Before the arguments began, a U.S. Department of Justice team had swept the courtroom for bugs, and extra security measures remained in place for the hearing in the case of Adel Daoud, he said.

“It was intimidating…My guys frankly assumed they weren’t supposed to record it,” Agnello said. “We screwed up, and there is no excuse.”

The arguments had garnered attention on Wednesday for a different reason. After the public session had ended, Judge Richard Posner abruptly ordered the courtroom cleared so a “secret hearing” on the case could be held. Only government officials with the proper security clearance -- including U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, his first assistant, Gary Shapiro, and about a dozen FBI and U.S. Department of Justice officials – were allowed back in the courtroom. Even Daoud’s lawyers was locked out of the courtroom.

Ironically, a stenographer was present to take down what was said in the secret hearing, though not the public session.

Agnello said he couldn’t remember a similar mix-up with the arguments going un recorded.

For more than two decades, the court has recorded the sessions at which a panel of judges fire questions at attorneys from both sides on an appeal, according to Agnello. The recordings are not legally required but are done as a courtesy for the judges, he said. In recent years the court has also posted the recordings online for the public to listen in.

Daoud’s attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin, who had no warning that he would be excluded from the secret session, said he was “astounded” to learn today that no record of the public argument had been made

“This is simply more proof of the two-tiered justice system that’s developing in this country out of national security fear-mongering, and it now appears to have been able to influence a court that is the most hyper-technically cautious court that I have ever practiced in,” Durkin said.

Durkin noted the court twice forced him to refile legal briefs in the case due to small technical errors.

“For a court that makes you cross every ‘T’ and dot every ‘I’ and count every word of every filing, I would have expected more,” he said.

Agnello said a stenographer “with the proper (security) clearance” took down what was said at the secret session.

Daoud, now 20, is facing trial on charges he plotted to set off a bomb outside a Loop bar in 2012. Authorities have said he came under FBI scrutiny after posting messages online about killing Americans.

Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman took the unprecedented action of ordering prosecutors to give Daoud’s lawyers access to confidential surveillance materials used in the government investigation, including search warrant applications that had been presented to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. Prosecutors appealed Coleman’s ruling, saying such a disclosure would threaten national security.

A federal appeals court in Chicago held a highly unusual closed-door session with government officials Wednesday after debating in public whether attorneys for a local terrorism suspect should be allowed to view confidential surveillance documents filed in the case.

A burst of thunderstorm activity across the Chicago-area in mid-afternoon Sunday led to the collapse of a dome in northwest suburban Rosemont and the temporary evacuation of the music festival Lollapalooza in Grant Park downtown.